Best First Day of School....EVER!

This is my phrase for the day.

This summer has been grueling. Not relaxing, not super fun, but annoyingly filled with work. Last week I took both the Algebra and the Analysis Qualifying exams. The Algebra exam was a bit harder than I thought - but doable if I didn't have a mental road block the size of Texas hanging around my brain. The Analysis exam must have been a god-send for me. The questions were exactly the questions that were on the exams for the semester. It was good then that I had spent a bunch of time on the exams we had done in class.

But still everything this summer has been unsure.

I taught my first class today - an intensive basic algebra course. Forty students. I have felt overwhelmed the past two days with the amount of prep work I felt I needed to do. But that feeling has somewhat washed over me - if I just spend a bit of time early in the semester getting all of this planned out - the course will seem like a non-issue at the end of the semester. I think it will be a good group - but that is just my initial impressions.

When I returned from teaching - I had heard that the qualifying exam results were in. Almost everyone had checked to find out how they did. So I traipsed up the stairs to my mailbox. My mailbox is one of the top-most boxes, so I slowly slid the envelope towards me. I held onto the envelope and walked back downstairs to my office. I opened the letter. First glance - crap there is like nothing at all written in the letter I must have failed. Second glance - "your performance on the blah blah blah exam"..."so we have decided to recommend you"...Third glance - "congratulations on this milestone" What??!?!?! It wasn't until the 4th reading of this tiny letter that it sunk in - I have PHD passed the qualifying exams and I am officially part of the PHD program here at SC.

Now this brings up a lot of decisions - particularly life decisions. I don't know all the possible options I have to complete this doctorate - that is if I still want to. It is quite an ego boost to see that these people believe I have some sort of mathematical ability. The Sparacio theorem is still very tempting to me. But I need to really think this through.

I also had graph theory and fourier analysis today - both of which turned out to be halfway decent and I managed to finish up my work for those classes. It is very satisfying.

Anyway - I am tired from worrying and hungry from a long day. So I might just sign off.